I still look for planes

When I hear them

I crouch

Instead of sit

So I'm ready

I feel the hair on the back of my neck

stand up—

a threat

But I'm really just standing in line

at the grocery store

McDonald's

the gas station

I sleep

With a racked gun

Beneath my pillow

I check rear view mirrors

Every time the car stops

My six is vulnerable

because there is no one left to watch it

All still deployed

Or dead

or going to college

And here I am

Here I am.

Figuring out how to assimilate.

it was brief, passionate, intoxicating, lethal—

a love that was never truly discovered, but proclaimed

i try to forget him—

his crooked nose & gritty smile

smelling of old spice & marlboro menthols

tasting like rum & sugar

i'd trace my fingers along the sinews of his body

try to lose myself in those artic eyes

sometimes he'd look at me, let me sense his pain

but we'd never speak about it

just lust & fawn over one another

talk politics & old stories

drink & smoke & watch stars punch through the sky

until one day

we just didn't

i thought holding on

would be my profound act of defiance

but then logic overcame me

so i released

left behind nothing but cigarette butts

& ashes & empty bottles of sailor jerry

because that's what you do

when you're more of a man

than the man you were with

I used to feel invincible. It wasn't when I was a child. It wasn't when I was a teenager. It was the year I turned 27.

I was impenetrable because I didn't care anymore.

I embraced self-destruction wholeheartedly.

Logic and reason ruled hard, emotions ran harder.

But I made shit happen.

I sit here, two years later, longing for that part of me.

Healed with visible fault lines.

Feeling insecure—not invincible.

Where is that person who protected herself?

Come back to me, woman.

i think a lot about the baby

we could have had

should have had

but didn't.

and it's my fault.

i dream about your hand

on my swollen belly,

your smile as you sense

what we created—

would have created

if only

my body was a battered vessel

my mind too wounded to comprehend

i feel it now.

wishing my womb would have sustained what was ours—

wishing my mind could have overcome itself

i dream about you

i dream about me

i dream about what could have,

should have,

but didn't.

my fingertips long

to feel a kick or heartbeat or sigh

that isn't just mine

or yours

but what could have been,

should have been

ours

waking up to a different ceiling

there is an absence of familiar sounds

that were once so foreign.

two years ago i heard trains,

a year ago, streetcars

today—my neighbor's wind chimes, passing traffic, and bar flys.

sure,

i still think of things

and people,

situations,

shit I felt and did

but god damn

does that feel so far away

the air is lighter

the opportunities

more tangible

have i changed?

absolutely.

am I more comfortable?

in a way.

but in the end

all that matters

is progress.

I bob & weave & trip over boxes--

some waiting to be filled,

some already overflowing.

Anxious desire fuels me

to "just get it over with"--

hurry up & move from home,

into home.

When that worn key turns the lock

one last time

I can reset my life,

unlock a new save point,

so I can respawn at a better time

than the one I found a year ago.

There aren't enough hours in the day

or logistics accounted for

to make this transition any quicker,

any less bitter, anymore sweet.

As the air cools & the humidity

draws out & the days shorten,

I sit and imagine what life will be like

on the other side of this--

this moment,

this city,

my pain.

At night I lay in bed

in a chaotically barren room

& feel pangs of the emptiness

of my past self.

Yet I know my boxes will be filled,

my soul will replenish,

& the past will feel that much further away

once I move on again.

Like the remnants of painted lips

On the butt of a discarded cigarette

Your mark on me remains

Like the haunting wisps of perfume

in a hotel hallway

your memory excites me

Like a dull ache in muscle

strained and worked days before

you pain me

So many analogies

Not enough resolution

I haven't slept comfortably in weeks.

It's always been something—aches, cramps, heat, stresses, rashes, stiff mattresses, hypotheticals.

And sometimes you.

You creep back into my thoughts.

You get tangled up in my subconscious.

Then I dream about you.

And I can't control you there.

So I wake up

stare at the black ceiling

and wait for it all to go away

with you.

Dear You:

Remember the orchid you bought me for my birthday?

Well, I killed it.

Not on purpose.  As a matter of fact, I tried everything I could to keep it alive.

Just like I did with our relationship.

I watered that orchid, but then it started to shed its petals.

So I stopped watering it for a little while.

I let it soak up sun and fresh air, but then its broad leaves started to yellow.

So I left it in the shade of my bookshelf.

I stopped smoking cigarettes inside. I rotated its pot.

But it continued to wither.

I looked up how to tend to this plant, how to help it thrive indoors.

Maybe I didn't research enough.

I babied it, but it didn't perk up, so I gave it some space.

I stopped touching it, instead I talked to it.

But still that birthday gift perished.

The death of that orchid made me realize that, sometimes, the more you try to care for something, the more likely it is to extinguish itself to escape the oppression of someone's concern.

Just like we did.

I've thought about what I've wanted to tell you for three years now, but I can't say that I've figured it out yet.

Yet here I am, trying. 

You think I would have learned to give up by now, but here I am persisting.

Since you gave me that orchid, I've tried to nurture other plants--most of them heartier than the one you gifted me.

I was too preoccupied trying to keep that one alive that the rest have either perished or thrived---thrived because I gave them up to someone else's care.

But I think I'm finally learning.

A few days ago, I upturned that special pot you nestled the orchid into last September.

For months its drying skeleton sat perched atop a stack of books--a constant reminder of my perceived failure: my failure of us, my failure of that once beautiful blooming organism.

In doing so, I discovered roots bound and rotted.  How long they had suffered that way is hard to tell.  

In doing so, I finally discovered that I may not have been to blame.

Maybe it was bought that way--flawed and destined for an early death by design.

Maybe you nor I had anything to do with our ceasing to be.

Maybe we just had to cease.

Regardless, I carry our history in my heart, but it's starting to weigh less with every moment that passes.

I carry it with me as I carefully water and rotate the growing bulb I planted in a freshly prepared pot.  I carry it with me so I know how to keep thriving. So I know what to do and what not to do, and how often.

I'll love you long after that orchid's marrow rots into the ground.

And afterwards, I'll still be grateful that, at one point in our discourse, you saw the beauty of that exotic plant fit to share with me.

Yours In Bloom,

Me

please don't remember

us

i'm trying my hardest not to, but those years we shared stain my memory like Lady Macbeth's damned spot

why should we both suffer with memories

that no longer have meaning

when i'm paying penance for us both